Chapter Thirty-three

Friday, October 27, 11:31 a.m.

Two days. Don had two days until the money was due. And he was no nearer to finding that money than he had been in the beginning. He had paid dearly to have the flight lists for both domestic and international flights checked, but no Free Meeker had flown anyplace under that name in the last two weeks. He had dispatched searchers throughout downtown Portland, but while there were a dozen girls in Pioneer Square who resembled her, thanks to a certain sameness granted by a buzz cut and a nose ring, none had actually been her. He had chased down every lead, and he had come up with nothing.

After these two days were used up, what would happen then? He didn’t really think they would do anything right after the deadline expired. At least Don told himself that. That would be like killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. If they eliminated him, then they eliminated their ability to turn dirty money into clean.

But if he were wrong, then he might be dead in two days. Don wondered what would happen to him then. Would he just be dead, be nothing? Maybe it would be good to be quiet, to finally be at rest. But if that wasn’t how it worked, if there was a hell, he would probably go to it. He had never intentionally hurt an innocent person, but there were too many people he had dispatched from this earth. And if there was a heaven? Would he be there with Rachel? With Rachel and their child?

Sixteen years before, Don had come home after a long day to find Rachel lying in a lake of blood on the floor of the bathroom. She was curled like a comma around the bulge of the baby that still weighted down her body. There was so much blood Don could smell it, an oily sweetish smell. So much blood Don could taste it in the very air. And even as he ran to Rachel, he saw it was old blood, turning brown, so thick and tacky it sucked at his shoes. There was blood running down the sides of the toilet seat, blood soaked into a towel discarded on the floor, blood saturating her gray maternity pants. And there was not the least bit of human warmth in Rachel when Don kneeled by her side and howled, howled for the woman and the baby he would never hold.

He didn’t know how long he pressed her against him. Finally, his eyes focused on the smeared handprints on the cream-colored wall, about waist high. Had Rachel tried to get up, or had she staggered as she fell?

Placenta previa, the doctor who did the autopsy had called it. The placenta had been attached over Rachel’s cervix, then ripped away. “Did she ever have an ultrasound?”

Don shook his head.

The other man shrugged. “If she had had one, it probably would have caught it. But there are still some old-time doctors who don’t think it’s important in a first pregnancy, with an obviously healthy mother. Placenta previa is quite uncommon in a first-time mom. But when it does occur, time is of the essence.”

Don heard the words as a personal accusation, even though he knew the doctor wasn’t making one. But there was no denying the fundamental truth. He had left Rachel alone, to die alone. “Does it hurt?” His voice so strangled he didn’t recognize it.

“No. The bleeding occurs suddenly and without pain. Some women delay seeking help because of that absence of pain. And there’s the element of surprise. She probably bled so fast she didn’t have time to change her mind. She had at most ten minutes before she passed out. Death occurred within half an hour.” The doctor guessed what Don was thinking. “Even if she had been brought in during those first few minutes, it would have been touch and go. The veins simply collapse from blood loss.”

In the first few months after her death, Don’s thoughts would obsessively return to what he had been doing while Rachel lay on the floor, the life blood gushing from her. Had he been laughing? Sharing a hit with Barry? Driving, singing along with the CD player? Yawning, eating lunch, filling out paperwork to show that money had been someplace it hadn’t? If he and Rachel had really loved each other as much as they said, if they had really been connected the way Rachel had promised, then why hadn’t his own heart stopped beating when hers did?

The obstetrician who had treated Rachel had a little hobby: woodworking. One day, about six weeks after Rachel’s death, he had a most unfortunate accident with a saw, severing his right hand. Death from blood loss had been almost immediate. The suddenness and the horrific nature of the accident, it was theorized, had prevented him from realizing he needed to go upstairs and phone for help. Instead, he had staggered around his basement hobby shop, blood fountaining from the stump, until finally he lay down and died.

That night, Don had washed the red stains from a yellow rain slicker and matching pants, flushed the drains with bleach, then wrapped rain slicker and pants up in brown paper and deposited them in a Dumpster behind an Albertsons in SE Portland. A few weeks later, driving through the same area, he saw a homeless man with beard and hair so long they had matted and tangled together, wearing the blindingly yellow outfit, even though it was eighty degrees outside.